Four in a Row
Do you remember it from your own schooldays? The strategy game that came to the rescue of so many of us before we succumbed to overwhelming mind-numbing boredom. But this is in actual fact not on the agenda today.
In the past few months, of course, we’ve taken a closer look at the German Purity Law – or to put it more correctly the ingredients that are indispensable for brewing beer. Hops, malt, water and yeast – these are the four quintessential raw materials – the brewer’s basic toolkit, so to speak. Besides significant gains in knowledge and experience on our research trips through the world of brewing raw materials, we also made a lot of interesting new contacts. To be more precise, we were dealing with genuine raw material professionals.
We kicked off by dropping in on Eugen Kirzinger’s hop farm in the Hallertau. There we learned quite a lot about the hops themselves and how they are harvested. By that time at the latest, we knew that the four seasons play a major role not only in the Pizza Hut and in Vivaldi’s compositions. Our itinerary then took us to Hans Lechner – and thus to the next brewing ingredient. Hans, you see, knows all there is to know about hops and malt, and was able to enlighten us very substantially on the long familiar and yet so strange subject of malt. Well, do you remember it now, what we called the soul of beer? 🙂 Which left us with water and yeast. And there Herr Birk and Herr Huber from the Doemens Academy were ready to answer all the questions we asked them.
Theoretically, you now know your way around in the mysterious realm of beer-brewing, and who can say – perhaps your expertise will already suffice for creating the first beer of your own? 🙂
